Video Game Critique

Super Mario 64 clip

Critique =

The biggest point that we had trouble conveying was describing who our audience would be.  We had a tough time defining this because our game has so many options and is so adaptable based on the person who chooses to play that the audience could virtually be any one.  Another point I felt we had trouble conveying was that we were trying to sell our game to investors.  I feel we kind of dropped the ball on that aspect of the project mainly because even though we could explain the games to ourselves, explaining it to others proved a bit confusing.

 

I think one of the flaws of our game was that we kept it way too open.  Yes, it is fun to have many options but we made it so our game was virtually unlimited, which makes it a bit more difficult to explain things such as goals and objectives.   The goals and objectives were by far the most difficult to explain.  The goals in the game are basically to acquire more ‘gadgets/things’ to be able to do more in further levels.  For example, if the game gave you the option to pick up an iPod that was not yours, if you took it you could use that to your advantage (sometimes disadvantage) in further levels.  This was also confusing when discussing the goals and objectives because every choice you get is linked with chance, so although your objective may be to choose to take a certain gadget  (in order to reach your goal of more ‘options’) you never know if taking or not taking the gadget is a good or bad choice until you find out the meaning or consequence of taking that gadget later in the game.  The idea of this concept is extremely intriguing but a bit confusing to explain to an audience of investors without having an example of the game to show.  We definitely could have overall, done a better job at explaining those aspects of our game and possibly given more of a visual to the audience by comparing our game to Sims for example. 

 

Overall, I do believe that we were creative in our game creation and each added a lot of innovative ideas to the game.  The rules were very clear. For example, avoid dying and the fact that there are restrictions built into the game (cannot run into the street when at a destination; virtual walls). Also, although the mechanics slide on the PowerPoint was underdeveloped by the requirements of the grade sheet, I do feel the idea was fully developed and explained properly by Max when he explained how you used the WASD keys to play the game ect. Each of us had no problem understanding the game ourselves but because the idea was so developed and complicated with several different options it made explaining it to an audience a bit more difficult that we would have liked.  I had a really great time designing the game and really wish we could have conveyed our idea much clearer.  I think if we could have done that, the game would have impressed the audience.